[OSM-talk] Lake District, Black Forest, etc.

[Nick Whitelegg]

>a word of caution regarding the various ideas of a "Lake
>District" or "Black Forest" mapping week. I'm all for setting high
>goals and challenging tasks, but if you aim too high then it might
>just happen that you end up completing just a fraction of what you
>hoped to complete, and the satisfaction that was likely felt by the
>London participants evades you.

>I'd advise against setting the wrong expectectations. I read that the
>Lake District has an area more than 2,000 square kilometres, which is
>quite large already; the Black Forest is more than five times that
>size (and has more than 32,000 kilometres of hiking trails and
>several thousand kilometres of paved roads). I doubt that it is
>possible to map a "significant portion" of either within a week!

>So all I'm saying is, select an achievable subset... or recruit more
>mappers ;-)

Regarding the Lake District event, it was never the intention to map the 
whole lot in one week. The aims of events such as the Lake District are:

a) by using a countryside location, offer a different flavour of mapping 
event which is likely to particularly appeal to, and recruit, people with 
an interest in countryside mapping;

b) to comprehensively map a particular part in the Lake District. I don't 
think it's beyond the realms of possibility to map everything in, say, the 
Grasmere/Langdale area - even in a particularly foul weekend earlier this 
month I managed to map many footpaths in Great Langdale and a couple of 
routes up the Langdale Pikes. 'Significant' is a subjective word but I 
would argue that planting a 'seed' in one of the more popular parts of the 
Lakes would encourage other people - particularly those that visit the 
area on a regular basis - to extend the mapping outwards. It's all about 
engendering interest.

Going back to the Surrey Hills event, despite the fact that not all of the 
"Surrey Hills" area was mapped (large numbers of footpaths between Reigate 
and Guildford remain unmapped) I'm sure all who attended would agree it 
was a worthwhile and enjoyable event. Similarly for the New Forest, 
probably 75% of all the mapped tracks in the Forest are mine (it's just 
down the road) and only 25% other contributors to the New Forest weekend. 
But again I'm sure most people enjoyed themselves.
Same goes for the IoW too. Again David Groom is responsible for the 
majority of the mapping there.

c) A national park, such as the Lakes or the New Forest (cf. last year's 
event) is likely to be the best choice for a walking event in terms of 
profile and attracting interest.


Regarding the Black Forest, I never evan began to suggest that mapping 
all, or even a significant part, of it was feasible in a week. For me, a 
trip to the black forest even without a gps would be enjoyable. I just 
thought that a mapping event in the area would provide an excuse for a 
combination of walking holiday and OSM get-together.

I think the key thing is, even if the mapping events do not lead to 
complete coverage, if one enjoys oneself then they can be construed as a 
success. The key thing with these sorts of walking-oriented mapping events 
is to choose locations which people will want to visit for the scenery's 
sake alone.

That said, the Isle of Purbeck is in the list. That's a much smaller area 
:-)

Nick